When Indie Cred Meets Celebrity Muscle: Why the Skims + Ami Colé FOUNDER Hire Matters for Beauty Culture

There’s a moment when an industry pivot quietly reveals its deeper values. That moment just arrived in beauty. Today, SKIMS announced that Diarrha N’Diaye‑Mbaye, the founder and driving force behind beloved, but recently folded, indie label Ami Colé, is joining as Executive Vice President of Beauty & Fragrance.

According to the press release, she’ll lead product development, innovation, and brand strategy for its upcoming spin-off brand, Skims Beauty.

“I have sat on salon floors, worked eight-hour shifts at beauty retailers, started a company, and am now taking an executive seat at a beauty brand promising to bring a fresh approach to beauty,” N’Diaye told The Cut on Monday.

“Skims is for everybody, and now we’re trying to create beauty for everybody,” she added in the press release. “I’m excited to bring in best-in-class formulas and customer-first mentality to Skims Beauty.”

And dare we say, if you’re a skincare or beauty brand founder watching this space, you might want to pay very close attention.

The meeting of two worlds

On one side: SKIMS. A powerhouse built on aspirational accessibility, second-skin comfort, viral launches, and direct-to-consumer momentum.

On the other: Ami Colé. A brand born from necessity, making shades, textures, and stories that communities of colour didn’t just ask for, they built demand for.

When N’Diaye-Mbaye launched Ami Colé, she brought the kind of intuition that looks less like trend-forecasting and more like lived experience. That’s rare. Then her brand closed its doors, not for lack of passion or community love but because the funding and infrastructure barriers for so many indie founders still loom large.

So this join-up? It’s not just a hire. It’s symbolic. Indie expertise meets celebrity-scale distribution. Soul meets system. And for beauty culture (and for founders) it opens a new kind of blueprint.

Why this matters for inclusivity but also for business

Inclusive beauty has been a buzz-term for years. But let’s be honest: representation in shade ranges, campaign casting or social posts isn’t enough if the product still wears like “one size fits them all.”

With N’Diaye-Mbaye at the helm, the hope is deeper: not just “we include you,” but “we were built for you.”

SKIMS now has a chance to bring inclusivity from the margins to the main lane. And for founders, that means something else: what if the best community-centric practices from indie brands are adopted in large-scale launches? The perks: better shade and undertone logic, different retail/test/distribution models, and a roadmap for brand building that honours culture as a driver, not just a marketing bolt-on.

From a business lens: this is smart. The beauty market has matured. Indiscriminate expansion without differentiation yields noise. So the question morphs: What credentials, what lived-insight, what design DNA do you bring? Bringing someone who literally built that credibility is not just nice-to-have, it might be necessary.

Watching the product roadmap

We’re wide-eyed for what comes next. No date yet, no SKU list yet however the mosaic of clues is already forming.

For founders and brand strategists: take note. The brand architecture here might teach something about wait-for-the-right-offer vs. fast-to-market flood. Quality will matter even in a fast-moving culture play.

What this means if you are a beauty founder

As a founder in the skincare/beauty space (especially if you care about culture, community, story, and inclusivity) here are four takeaways:

1. Your founding experience is currency. The folks who grew up building communities, designing for under-represented bridges, and navigating margin-tight environments are proving to be the architects others want. Your story, if grounded in authenticity and insight, is your asset.

   
   

2. Scale is a muscle so start building it early. Ami Colé’s closure wasn’t about lack of love, it was about lack of infrastructure. If you’re building, spend as much energy on ops, distribution, supply chain as on the hero product. Because culture-first + system-strong = resilient.

   
   

3. Inclusivity must live in product DNA, not just campaign lines. Shades, textures, undertones, these are non-negotiables. And if your brand claims “for all,” you’ll need processes and testing that match that claim.

   
   

4. Alignment over amplification. A massive platform (hello SKIMS) can boost reach. But to truly move culture, the platform must align with the person doing the work (N’Diaye-Mbaye). The takeaway: Pick your collaborators not just for their size but for their lived value-alignment.

Final thought: It’s about culture first, commerce second

At Sheronimo, we believe that story-first strategy wins. The hire of Diarrha N’Diaye-Mbaye by SKIMS sends a signal: beauty brands that want to move culture must embed culture at their core.

From founder to formula to funnel.

If executed well, this next chapter from SKIMS might not just make headlines, it might shift norms.

Expectations for shade inclusivity, brand-authenticity, founder-visibility and operational resilience could all reset.

And when that happens, founders who’ve been quietly building with integrity will find they’re not just the future, they’re the blueprint.

Stay tuned. Because this is one story that might not just be “Look what happened”  but “Look what’s possible.”